After five games on the road the Blazers return home to the friendly Rose Garden to take on the Magic. The place where DarthBlazer and all of the rest of the Blazer faithfull will remain standing until the Blazers make their first shot. http://www.clubblazers.com/blazers-discussion/movement-t1037.html" rel="nofollow" rel="nofollow
Gametime is 7 pm Pacific
The last time these two teams met was on November 10, when the Blazers beat the Magic in Orlando snapping a 4 game Magic win streak.
The Blazers will be playing this game after a day off Monday following a successful 5 game road trip. They come home with a 4-1 record for their road trip, with the only loss being a tough game in Boston where they were simply overmatched by a better team. Fundamental weaknesses on both the offensive and defensive end of the floor were exposed by the Celtics and it will be interesting to see both how our team responds to that and how other teams look to exploit those weaknesses.
In Sundays game against the Raptors the Blazers were lucky to escape with a victory. They fell behind early, caught up, took the lead, gave up the lead, and ended up winning after a 3 point shot by Steve Blake and a miss by Chris Bosh.
Although you could argue that the team didn't really play all that well on the trip, I'm calling it successful for several reasons. In the NBA, the road is a tough place to play. Any team that goes 4-1 on a five game trip should go home happy. Even though there was some sloppy play we did what good teams do and that is find ways to win when you are not playing well. And lastly, I'm hoping that after the debacle in Boston our team will learn what it needs to know about itself and take the steps needed to grow from pretender to contender status. After a six game win streak and starting the season much better than anyone expected the Boston game was an opportunity to measure our growth. It will be interesting to see how we do with the Celtics when they visit Portland on Dec 30.
The Magic will arrive in Portland after playing the Clippers on Monday night. So this game will be the second game of back to back road games for them. Mikael Pietrus is out 3 to 5 weeks with a spained thumb, so former Duke player JJ Reddick will get a chance to show everyone what he can do. He'll be sharing minutes with Keith Bogans who has just returned to the active lineup after being out with a thumb injury. Sheesh, what is it with the Magic and these thumb injuries? Point guard Jameer Nelson returned to the lineup Saturday after missing some games due to a hip flexor
Projected starters
Portland Trailblazers
Steve Blake -PG
Brandon Roy-SG
Nic Batum-SF
LaMarcus Aldridge-PF
Greg Oden-Center
